Making an AP out of Old dungeon adventures

[hanexs]

I am just wrapping up an Age Of Worms campaign (we are on prince of redhand now) and I am thinking about the next campaign we will run. I am not interested in Savage tide, and I have a lot of old dungeons so I was thinking about making a homebrew AP that just links dungeon adventures. I kind of want everything to be generic... we are all a little bored of the "God wants to take over the world" or "prophecy of destruction" type campaign.

I have a map I am making that is very simple, the players will start in a small city and eventually move to a big city. There will be an evil empire nearby (race undecided) a chaotic empire nearby (probably goblinoid or orcish) and the players will be in a good kingdom (human). The elves will come from a nearby forest and the dwarves will be based in a mountain. As I said, pretty generic.

Now I am thinking of the adventures I want in this campaign. I am not really interested in a theme for the campaign right now. What I am worried about most is a variety of adventures and a variety of situations to challenge many class types and break the monotany my campaigns have gotten into. I am trying to think of as many types of adventures as possible. For example in the last 10 years we have never had an adventure where the party fought in a war, but we have went into an old mine to find a relic hundreds of times.

So with all that in mind, here are some types of adventures I am looking for :

A castle siege adventure
An urban sewer type adventure
A battle adventure (where the players help win a battle)
A roleplaying type adventure (like Prince of Redhand)
A forest adventure (treants, unicorns, wood elves ect)
A trap based dungeon type adventure
A sea adventure where the the party fights using boats (must be a good one in Savage tide right?)
An arena gladiator type advenure (my players loved champions belt)
An adventure on another plane
A save the princess type adventure
A chase type adventure ("Riding the Rail" in issue 143 is pretty cool)
An adventure where illusions are used (I found they were largely ignored in AOW)

If you have any other types of adventure themes that you feel are original and underused please feel free to post it.

If you have know of any good adventures that meet the criteria above, please give the title of the adventure and the level (low, medium high is good enough, I have no problem scaling adventures). I also have access to almost every dungeon so going far back is an option (but IMHO Dungeon adventures have gotten much easier to read and run in the last few years).

Anyways if you have any feedback THANKS!

[Rezdave]

hanexs wrote:

I was thinking about making a homebrew AP that just links dungeon adventures. I kind of want everything to be generic... we are all a little bored of the "God wants to take over the world" or "prophecy of destruction" type campaign.

This is exactly what I do with my huge backlog of magazines, and the map/adventure database of them I prepared. My current campaign had been running bi-weekly over 3 1/2 years, and quite frankly we have covered much of the ground you have mentioned above (including a war "prequel" to the Shadows of Istivin trilogy).

Check us out at YahooGroups' "reddin_campaign" if you're interested in the details or want to correspond about specifics.

Generally speaking, my campaign is extremely Player-driven and thus plotting out specific "adventure paths" in advance is impossible and worthless. Rather, I see what the Players are interested in doing then choose appropriate adventures develop matching story arcs that fit their desires.

Meanwhile, in the back of my head I've got a vague sense of meta-plot in the 1st-5th level adventures, but the PCs never really get involved with it. As they go from story-arc to story-arc and adventure to adventure I offer them a variety of hooks for adventures appropriate to their level ... too many, quite frankly, for them to complete them all without rising too high for the adventures to become underpowered. Instead they return from months of adventuring to find that other adventurers have taken care of other problems, or sometimes died trying.

As the group matures they develop more ties to the world and personal interests therein, particularly as they rise in power. Between 5th and 10th level they are perhaps messing more and more with minions of a meta-plot, and even coming to the attention of one faction or the other. But perhaps not, and they are just explorer-adventurers.

By 10th level they are getting powerful enough that they become pawns of a powerful "sub-boss" in the metaplot (or not) and by 15th have been exposed to enough that they are peeling back the final layers and learning the truth, becoming champions of one side or another.

Of course, an AP/meta-plot doesn't need to be about gods and prophesies ... simply acting in the service of a landlord, then a Baron, then a Duke then the King as you rise in levels might be enough. Championing your patron on personal quests, delivering secret embassies, routing out insurrectionists and so forth.

Monte Cook's best ever Dungeoncraft (IMHO) "The Campaign Outline: Plotting the Campaign (Part5)" in Issue #125 covered all of this pretty well. I found it ironic that in Issues 124-125 where his columns talk about managing the flow of information to the PCs and evolving a plot over the course of the campaign we simultaniously have the opening adventures of the disappointing AoW AP where we open the first two adventures with stories of powerful undead, find a pickled green worm, introduce and then defeat the "Tripartite Overgod Cult" and give away the farm on the whole returning god business.

I really wish the Dungeon and AP staff would (re)read those two articles before planning the next adventure path.

My general advice (to anyone not publishing a monthly magazine on deadlines) is never to plan specifics more than a few levels or 3 adventures ahead. Let the campaign develop on its own and be fluid with it. If you need mechanics for running a war around the PCs, let me know.

Just make sure the Players are having fun, and the story will find its own way.

Best,

Rez

P.S. FWIW, my own AP has gone as follows (i'm not looking up issue numbers ... too much trouble):

Mystery of the Dagger - a home-brew intro
Best Laid Plans
Wild in the Streets
Bandits of the Bunglewood (crossed with Dockalong, from Wedding Bells?)
Artist's Loving Touch (greatly expanded)
Burning Plague (WotC PDF)
Honor Lost variant
Ever-Changing Fortunes
... extended downtime for PC careers ...
Wolf's Head Protectorate (home-brew outgrowth of DT activity)
Giant Encounter (home-brew one-shot giant hunting)
Prey for Tyrinth
Mellorn Hospitality (rather modified)
Green Twins (dragon-hunting one-shot homebrew)
Sterish Giant War Story Arc (home-brew prequel to "Shadows of Istivin")
... more extended downtime for PC families and careers ...
Egg-Hunt (home-brew ... PCs wanted hippogriff eggs)
Witches & Cults Story Arc (pursuing Kayris from Mellorn Hospitality who had escaped to become a major villain and nemesis over 5 years of war and downtime)

We're currently wrapping up the battle against Kayris who has become a major minion in the meta-plot the PCs are now unraveling for the first time.

Incidentally, they have passed on too many adventures to name, and I don't even remember them all, but I had hooks to things like A Way with Words, Plundering Poppof, Natural Selection, Asflag's Unintentional Emporium, Tears for Twilight Hollow (though the village became a major backdrop in the campaign), Dying of the Light and uncounted others that simply did not interest them or the story didn't go that way.

R.

[Mothman]

Hanexs, here's a few off the top of my head, I'm not sure if Ive got the level range right in all cases...

A castle siege adventure: potentially “Keep for Sale” (low level)
An urban sewer type adventure: The Stink (low level)
A battle adventure: Tides of Dread (mid level)
A roleplaying type adventure: The Swords of Dragonslake (high level I think). Shut In (Low level). Wedding Bells (low level). The House on the Edge of Midnight (low to mid level)
A forest adventure: Mellorn Hospitality (mid level). Iriandel, with some modification (low-mid level). There were a couple of adventures set in Mistledale for low to mid levels which might be suitable.
A trap based dungeon type adventure: The Mud Sorcerers Tomb (high level). Ex Karaptis Cum Amore (mid to high level)
A sea adventure where the the party fights using boats: Parts of “the Sea Wyvern’s Wake’’ (low level)
An arena gladiator type advenure. Pandemonium in the Veins (mid to high level)
An adventure on another plane: Umbra (mid level)
A save the princess type adventure: Racing the Snake (mid level)
A chase type adventure: Racing the Snake (mid level)

Wow, theres some unexpected automatic censoring going on in my post...

[Rezdave]

hanexs wrote:

A castle siege adventure

SNIP
A battle adventure (where the players help win a battle)
SNIP
A forest adventure (treants, unicorns, wood elves ect)
SNIP
A sea adventure where the the party fights using boats (must be a good one in Savage tide right?)

IIRC you mentioned in another thread own a lot of old Dungeons. How about:

Siege of Kratys Freehold
Elexa's Endeavor
Dark Times in Sherwood
Storm Lord's Keep
Raiders of the Black Ice
Encounter at Blackwall Keep

Last Stand at Outpost Three (easily modified out of Dark Sun)

Alicorn
Legacy of the Liosalfar
Janx's Jinx
Bandits of the Bunglewood
The Bigger the Are
White Boar of Kilfay
Things That Go Bump in the Night
To Save a Forest
Wayward Wood
The Little People
Enormously Inconvenient
Visiting Tylwyth
Faerie Wood
Bad Seeds
Natural Selection
Legend of Garthulga
Forest of Blood
Mellorn Hospitality
Secrets of the Arch Wood
Wingclipper's Revenge

Can Seapoint be Saved/North of Norbel
Floating Rock
Lady Rose, The
Flowfire (adapted from Spelljammer)
Huzza's Goblin O' War
Sunken Shadow, The (with modifications)

HTH,

Rez

[hanexs]

Got a lot of good ideas here :) I think I'll start putting together a campaign.

[Germytech]

[u]Mad God's Key[/u] Definitely.

This adventure is a must, and seriously one of the best first-level adventures I have ever read. Dungeon #114

It has urban exploration, a chase scene, clues to uncover, and dungeon crawl. Many of the elements can be easily modified (locations, the cultists, etc.) to fit your players.

And the adventure has several ready-made hooks for an entire campaign. An ancient book with missing pages, a key with magical powers, bad guys that got away...

I highly reccomend it. :D

[R-type]

Germytech wrote:

[u]Mad God's Key[/u] Definitely.

This adventure is a must, and seriously one of the best first-level adventures I have ever read. Dungeon #114

It has urban exploration, a chase scene, clues to uncover, and dungeon crawl. Many of the elements can be easily modified (locations, the cultists, etc.) to fit your players.

And the adventure has several ready-made hooks for an entire campaign. An ancient book with missing pages, a key with magical powers, bad guys that got away...

I highly reccomend it. :D

Have to say how awsomely good [u]Mad God's Key[/u] is. A favorite of mine!